Groton Finance Committee reviews troubles with country club

By Pierre Comtois, Correspondent

Updated:
03/27/2013 12:38:48 AM EDT

GROTON -- In the lead-up to spring Town Meeting May 22, the Finance Committee on Tuesday continued to review proposed spending items concentrating on areas of concern, including the troubled Groton Country Club, renamed, the Pool & Golf Center.

The committee is concerned with the club's continuing struggle with finances that fall short of breaking even.

The club's event component concerned Chairman Jay Prager.

"We're subsidizing people to get married," said Prager, noting the imbalance between expenses and revenues in relation to the club's hosting of wedding parties and other similar activities.

"I'd say that the event business is pretty much break even," said Pool & Golf Center manager Robert Whalen.

"Where's the whole thing going?" asked Prager.

"It's a tyranny of small numbers," Whalen said, explaining that the key was club membership. If it did not increase, then there would be no change in revenues.

Whalen said increasing membership in the swim component, for example, could be done with no impact on expenses, but the same could not be said of events which entail hall and food preparation, cleanup and maintenance.

"So the solution is to get more members?" asked Prager.

"It's possible," said Whalen. He said the club was moving from traditional ways of advertising to using social media such as Facebook and Web-page hosting to attract attention and build a database of potential members that can then be targeted in specific campaigns, such as Father's Day specials.

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"That's the only way to find new people," said Whalen.

When asked again by Prager about the apparent discrepancy in his department's budget between profit and loss regarding event hosting, Whalen said, "Every event makes money."

But when asked to show the numbers that proved it, Whalen promised to meet again with the committee when he had the figures.

Later in the meeting, after Whalen left, the Country Club came up again as part of a review of capital-spending requests in the warrant. At issue was a request from the club for a new boom sprayer.

"It's a subsidy for adult entertainment, that's what it is," said Prager of the disparity between profit and expenses at the Country Club.

Prager said the $6,500 needed for the sprayer could be found within the club's operating budget.

Immediately after its interview with Whalen, the committee moved on to Parks Commissioner John Strauss who met with the Finance Committee to explain the latest developments regarding an attempt by the commission in partnership with local sports groups to develop a 35-acre town-owned parcel next to the transfer station into three new playing fields.

Strauss said a recent setback with the state regarding its matching funds for the Community Preservation Commission would mean that there might not be enough money in the group's unallocated reserve to cover the commission's request for $350,000 needed to help pay for the estimated $900,000 total cost of the project.

A possible solution to the problem, said Strauss, came from Town Manager Mark Haddad who suggested that the request be divided into two warrant articles. One would seek $309,000 from the CPC and the other would authorize the town to borrow the balance of $591,000.

The authorization to borrow the latter amount would be conditioned upon the Parks Commission winning a state grant of $400,000.

Finance Committee members still had questions about alternatives to developing the town-owned land and wondered why field space behind the Florence Roche School could not be used or if privately owned land in the same area as the transfer station could not be purchased and developed for less money.

Prager mentioned falling enrollment in the school district in wondering why the number of sports teams were exploding in town when it seemed as if the number of young people was going down.

Strauss said the Florence Roche field was in use and would not satisfy demand in any case, and other land near the transfer station would be too expensive to buy and develop into fields.

After Strauss, the committee met with Haddad to review the warrant articles for Town Meeting with Prager, agreeing that Haddad's proposed budget for fiscal 2014 presented "no big issues" to him.

But that was before he noted a merit-pay proposal for town employees that would award them a 2 percent raise for good work as part of an incentive program.

The only problem Prager had with it was that once awarded, the extra pay acted less like a one-time bonus than a permanent raise, remaining in place until the employee left.

Haddad said there was nothing that could be done about it as he had negotiated the increase with the town's unions in exchange for the unions giving up the step system of salary increases.

"That's what happened," said member Steve Webber of the deal. "We're never going to get out of that."

Similarly, Finance Committee members had a problem with a School Committee article seeking $562,055 above its proposed operating budget for the purchase of upgrading the schools' computer technology.

Discussion centered around what the district intended on buying with questions raised whether the schools had an accurate idea of what they really needed.

Prager suggested that it would seem better for the district to hire an information-technology consultant out of their budget first and have that person figure out what equipment was really needed then come to the towns for the money.

There was concern that if the funds were granted before an expert could be consulted on the issue, politics would take over and the consultant would not dare tell the schools' administration that they had spent the money on the wrong equipment.

"You know that if you give (them the money) they're going to spend it," said Haddad.

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